Category Archives: Musing

War Zone

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Good grief. Is it really a month since my last update? Well, progress continues. Even when I’m not in the mood or I feel stuck, I have made a point of writing every day. Sometimes it’s as little as a sentence or two; sometimes it’s several pages. At this point it’s less about the flow than about keeping the pipes from freezing. Result: I’m moving slowly, but chapter six is past the midpoint.

This is where the story picks up. To now it’s been exposition; we’ve met the characters, gotten a feel for the scene, and had a taste of the mysteries and perils at play. Here is where it starts to gel; the stakes are defined, people begin to make decisions, and we start to explore just what’s going on in this picture.

As part of that process I find myself dumping exposition through dialog with a new character, to bring the story to date into focus and give it a jumping-off point. When I came to the scene, I didn’t realize what was happening; I just had it in my head as a turning point where the characters began to accept a call to action. In retrospect this scene is what the story needs to build its own momentum.

I’m amazed when I touch, and then pass, these far-off milestones. As ever, things don’t always happen exactly the way that I envisioned them — but then my vision is always a little hazy in the particulars. It’s intimidating to approach these moments — plot points, character points — that I have planned for so long. As with so many of my plans, some part of me never thought they were real; I figured I would roll them around in my head forever. I would keep laying them out on notebook pages, drawing lines, filling in blanks. Now the story has washed up and begun to absorb them.

Another thought, while I’m here: I spend ages laboring over my word choices. Each word has its own nuance, each phrase its rhythm, and I beat myself up a little when they don’t flow the way I want. As I write it, then, each page, each conversation seems to go on forever. If you look at my notebook, it’s all scribbles and arrows and notes in the margin. Then when I read the printed page, it’s just… there. The words come and they go, and none of that work really shows. I feel like if I want to get any meaning across I’ll have to resort to all-caps or novelty typefaces.

Maybe that subtlety is a strength. I don’t know. It could mean hidden layers for readers to uncover the third or fourth time through, or it could just mean that the story isn’t communicating anything. I’m trying not to be too obvious, but I do intend my points to come across.

It’s a puzzlement. We’ll see how it hangs together when there’s more to go over.

Better a Better Time

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Chapter five is still in progress, if you can believe it. Every time I think it’s wrapping up, it finds a new tangent to explore. I think that’s actually one of the things that has been slowing me down. There are the practical issues, sure — moving house, a less ideal working space, increased demands on my time — but I could work around those if I wanted. The real problem is that when I don’t know what I’m doing I go into heavy procrastination. The more frustrated I feel, the more detached I become and the harder it is for me to get into the right headspace. That struggle frustrates me all the more, and eventually I throw my hands up.

The solution there is to just notice the cycle, lean back, let it drain away, and actively try to place myself where I need to be. It will slip, many times — but meanwhile I will scrabble out a little text. And the more I do it, the easier it is to cling.

I think I’m also impatient. This chapter is sort of an intermission from the main story, and I left that on a cliffhanger just when I was getting into the material that I really want to write about. I don’t like the nonlinear approach, but the linear one is bogging me down. I need to chill and appreciate where I am and what I’m doing. This stuff is interesting and important too, and it will tie in later. Write in the moment.

While we’re here: revised word cloud.

Chapter 5

Caves All the Way Out

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There we go. I seem to have broken that hump, and now the prose can flow.

This character is always harder for me, possibly because his thoughts and motivations are so much more pronounced. It’s easier for me to hint than to state, and there is so much here to be coy about — yet without some kind of exposition I’ll never get anywhere.

I guess I don’t have to worry much about subtlety. Something I have noticed — even when I feel like I’m screaming and hammering a point to death, others tend not to pick up on the signs. For many years I wondered how everyone around me could be so dim. It’s only lately that I realized I might actually be that obscure.

Bucket Seats

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Oh, I see where this chapter is going. That’s good. I was hoping it would get around to all of this.

It’s odd how helpless one feels in the face of the creative process. You want things to happen, but the process has its own ideas and methods that it only sometimes deigns to share with its host. It will take your suggestions into advisement, and maybe — just maybe, when it’s done with its own little circles of contemplation — it will quietly stumble upon them. And then very likely it will pretend that they were all part of its plan.

Part of the skill in a creative field is to learn which battles to pursue. Few of them are worth the energy; just let the damned muse have her way. Little does she realize that it’s your ideas which inspire her.

The gratitude continues, with big thanks to Mr. Brandon Sheffield — whose enthusiasm I can credit with inching me toward actual production on this novel, and whose support does not abate.